How the Training Ground works

Facts checked 1 Nov 2026

The Training Ground lets you learn Influence with a crew that isn't yours yet. You hire an Academy tutor crew by the day, practise the basics on the Academy's own asteroid, and only then decide what to buy: a starter pack, a single crewmate, or several.

How it works

• Hire a Tutor Crew: The Academy's tutor crews are hired by the day on adalia.exchange, a community site for renting crews and ships. While the hire lasts, the crew is yours to command in the game, just like a crew of your own.
• Practise on Adalia Academy: The tutor crews live on Adalia Academy, the Academy's main asteroid. Instead of building, you lease the Academy's extractors, refineries, and factories by the job, and use its marketplaces to buy supplies and sell what you make. Academy Market 2 is kept for tutor crews: only they can sell there, and the Academy posts buy orders there for what students make.
• Hand It Back: When the hire ends, the crew returns to the Academy for the next student. Any SWAY you earned by selling stays in your own wallet, but anything you haven't sold, whether it's in the crew's warehouse or still waiting to be collected from an extractor, may be lost to the next student who hires that crew.

What it costs

Each tutor crew costs 100 SWAY a day, and you can hire one for 14 to 28 days at a time ( the hire desk in Hiring an Academy crew shows live prices and which crews are free). With a dollar buying hundreds of thousands of SWAY, a fortnight's hire costs a tiny fraction of a cent. You'll also pay for the buildings you lease and the supplies you buy, at the same tiny scale.

What you'll need

• A Wallet of Your Own: adalia.exchange connects through a browser wallet such as Ready X or Braavos. It doesn't work with an Influence Account yet. The next lesson, Creating a Starknet wallet, shows you how to set one up.
• A Little SWAY: For the hire, leases, and supplies. See Your first SWAY.
• A Little STRK: For the network fees on adalia.exchange. The lesson Funding your wallet explains how to get both into your wallet.

Already have a crew of your own? The Training Ground courses need a tutor crew stationed on Adalia Academy, so they aren't for crews based elsewhere. Head to Starting for Real instead. See Choosing your route.

Three rules to remember

• Lease by the Job: When you start an extraction or a refining job on an Academy building, use the Lease & Extract (or Lease & Process) button on the job's own screen. It leases the building for exactly as long as the job takes. Don't lease through the building's own lease window: it asks you to choose a number of days, and it's easy to pay for far more time than you need.
• Empty the Warehouse Before You Leave: Each tutor crew has its own warehouse. Whatever is still in it when your hire ends passes to the next student, so sell or use everything first.
• Feed Your Crew First: A hired crew will rarely start with a full larder, and a hungry crew works more slowly. Your first job is always to buy enough food to bring your crew up to 100%. It's also a gentle first step in using your wallet in the game. The lesson Feeding your crew shows you how.

The courses

The Training Ground is six short courses, worked through in order, each building on the one before. Together they have one goal: to make the materials for one warehouse, the first building on any new asteroid you settle.

1. Your Wallet and First Crew: setting up and funding a wallet, connecting your wallet to the Academy, hiring a tutor crew with a Miner, an Engineer, a Scientist, and often a Merchant, and feeding your crew. This course.
2. Extracting: mining a raw material with a leased extractor on your first day, from a core sample your crew already holds or a used one you buy, then selling what you've mined.
3. Prospecting: taking core samples of your own to find out what lies under a lot, and extracting from what you find.
4. Refining: weathering olivine, making oxygen and carbon monoxide, and turning water into salts and calcium, in leased refineries.
5. The Acid Loop: leaching olivine with sulfuric acid, turning the sulfur dioxide back into acid, and making iron.
6. Steel and Cement: making steel, rolling it into beams and sheets in a leased factory, and making cement: one warehouse's worth.

By the end you'll know what a crew can do, which classes you want in your own, and whether to start on Adalia Prime or somewhere else (see Where to start).